n at home at Sycamore for several months.
Much of this time he had spent in Clarendon, where his father's wealth
and influence gave him entrance to good society, in spite of an
ancestry which mere character would not have offset. He knew young
Fetters very well by sight, since the latter had to pass Mink Run
whenever he came to town from Sycamore. Fetters may not have known
him, since he had been away for much of the time in recent years, but
he ought to have been able to distinguish between a white man--a
gentleman--and a Negro. It was the insolence of an upstart. Old Josh
Fetters had been, in his younger days, his uncle's overseer. An
overseer's grandson treated him, Ben Dudley, like dirt under his feet!
Perhaps he had judged him by his clothes. He would like to show
Barclay Fetters, if they ever stood face to face, that clothes did
not make the man, nor the gentleman.

Ben decided after this encounter that he would not go on the floor of
the ballroom; but unable to tear himself away, he waited until
everybody seemed to have gone in; then went up the stairs and gained
access, by a back way, to a dark gallery in the rear of the hall,
which the ushers had deserted for the ballroom, from which he could,
without discovery, look down upon the scene below. His eyes flew to
Graciella as the needle to the pole. She was dancing with Colonel
French.

The music stopped, and a crowd of young fellows surrounded her. When
the next dance, which was a waltz, began, she moved out upon the floor
in the arms of Barclay Fetters.

Ben swore beneath his breath. He had heard tales of Barclay Fetters
which, if true, made him unfit to touch a decent woman. He left the
hall, walked a short distance down a street and around the corner to
the bar in the rear of the hotel, where he ordered a glass of whiskey.
He had never been drunk in his life, and detested the taste of liquor;
but he was desperate and had to do something; he would drink till he
was drunk, and forget his troubles. Having never been intoxicated, he
had no idea whatever of the effect liquor would have upon him.

With each succeeding drink, the sense of his wrongs broadened and
deepened. At one stage his intoxication took the form of an intense
self-pity. There was something rotten in the whole scheme of things.
Why should he be poor, while others were rich, and while fifty
thousand dollars in gold were hidden in or around the house where he
lived? Why should Colonel French, a